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WME Books is excited about today's announcement. We have not kept this blog updated to its fullest potential - but watch out world, that's not going to be the case going forward because our authors have been hard at work creating titles that you won't want to miss out on.

Today, I have the pleasure of announcing two NEW releases... for your reading pleasure. Both of these books are must-haves for your business bookshelf. These authors are not only talented, they are experienced in their fields of endeavor - and have written books that will change the way you do business.

First, Sybil Sterschic is an internal marketing expert with more than 30 years of experience dealing with the internal workings of business. She's written a book for employers, managers, and HR professionals who want to create a working environment that motivates employees to take the best possible care of their customers -- and each other.

Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care is "One of the best books on internal marketing," according to Jagdish N. Sheth, author of The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies.

Merrill Dubrow, President & CEO, M/A/R/C Research says, "A must read for all managers. There is something in this book for everyone, even those who have managed people for 30 years."

Dr. Susan Reid is a true entrepreneur. In 2004 she left academia after a successful career as a professor and conductor and founded her current company, Alkamae. Dr. Reid (you may call her Susan) takes the fear out of starting up your own business with her new book Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Journey to Business Success. Her clients are committed to making a difference not only in their lives, but in the world around them. Susan's book unlocks the real "secret" to doing what you love using your intuition and even scheduling chaos. Check out Susan's Alkamae blog for more great content.

"This book is filled with the kind of inspiration entrepreneurs search for, day after day. Not a mere How-to book, Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Journey to Business Success will help you focus your energy inward -- to find that sense of 'awe' which led you to exploring the world of being an entrepreneur in the first place," says Jordan Adler, Entrepreneur and Network Marketing Top Money Earner.

According to Jim Horan, author of the best-selling book series, The One Page Business Plan, "Business is first and foremost about people. Customers, employees, and investors are people...and so are you. There are thousands of books about the strategies and mechanics of business; this book is about you, the entrepreneur/business owner...and helping you understand you!"

Hedria Lunken will tell you, “It doesn’t get better. It only gets different.” That was her mantra as she struggled through the long journey of recovery, after her soul mate of 30+ years left her—for the grave.

An instructor in the “inspirational teaching” profession, Hedria discovered her talent to help others navigate change through the writing she did in her “letters to Paul,” a journal she kept for three years after his sudden death. In her despair and insecurity, lost in a world of senselessness, Hedria’s only release was in writing to her lost love, page after page of loneliness, anger, and finally, rejuvenation. Through it all, she learned how to cope with life’s intrusions—how to bear the loneliness, even when with friends; how to get up and accomplish small tasks, then bigger ones; even how to love again.

This is a book that will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It will inspire you to get up out of your chair or your bed, and tackle life’s challenges, one step at a time. Each chapter begins with Hedria’s insights and ends with a set of tools to help you traverse that bumpy road of change. Meant for women more so than men—because women are the one’s who most often find themselves needing to change, be it through death or divorce—this book challenges the reader to become someone, someone beyond the ‘someone’ you may have been in a past life, in a life the existed before the intrusion of death or divorce. Filled with humor, compassion, and practical advice, Square One at 51: What I did the day after I buried my life will have you looking forward to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. In a way you never did before.

In the Introduction, the author writes

I invite you to follow my steps from total shock to a new beginning . . . . read how I pushed myself to grow professionally and personally by creating and then accepting new challenges. If you’ve lost your soul mate, or faced making major changes in your life, you’ll recognize and understand the experiences I describe. Use this book to help you through your challenges and to find your way over the hurdles.

Hedria was able to help plan and then attend her daughter’s wedding, without Paul at her side. Her Masters of Science diploma in Creativity arrived in the mail only two weeks into her mourning, leaving her wondering what to do next, finally inspiring her to go out on her own—to become more than she thought she could become, and to achieve not only peace, but happiness. Today Hedria is remarried, she is a past president of the Creative Education Foundation, and she speaks and writes on navigating change.

Square One at 51: What I Did the Day After I Buried My Life can be purchased at the WME Books’ online bookstore at www.wmebooks.com, and will be offered on Amazon.com soon.

Edgar Allan Poe is recognized as the father of the mystery story, but would never have imagined becoming part of a software development manual in today’s world. However, his method of solving crime is the compelling foundation for The Reverse Detective.

The average business owner is as clueless about software development as most citizens are about crime solving, despite the popularity of TV shows such as CSI and Law and Order. While it’s fun to watch TV sleuths solve murder mysteries, when the crime is a breakdown in communications or software engineering in our offices, those of us who are computer literate but not computer savvy, have to admit defeat. We know we need solutions, and we know the answer is often found in specifically designed software—but how that software gets written is beyond the comprehension of many. The Reverse Detective turns that unknown upside-down, offering a peek into the successful creation of customized software solutions, from first need to final approval. “We think software failure is a crime,” says Bullinger. “And the key is to solve the crime before it happens. In other words, to do things in reverse. Using our method prevents mistakes by precisely determining and modeling the right requirements before you begin writing code.”

By utilizing Poe and Sherlock Holmes in the most unusual roles of their fictional lives, Bullinger and Mitra have removed the veil of mystery surrounding software development and created a way for the average non-geek to “figure out” how the average geek does it—and does it well. The authors believe that “when you put The Reverse Detective process to work, you’ll minimize the chance of blown budgets, missed deadlines, endless revision rounds, and other career-busting problems.” The success is in the “clues”—little steps taken that unravel the mystery and reveal the solution. While the role of the software engineer and the role of the detective seem to have no relationship, the authors of The Reverse Detective suggest that the relationship is based “not in what they each do, but rather in their methodology: how they go about doing it.”

The Reverse Detective: Pragmatic Software Requirements & Analysis is intended for anyone who has a stakehold in a company’s software development—including business managers, project managers, process owners and hands-on software engineers. The book would also be an excellent addition to the reading list for a course on software development.

Tom Bullinger is President and founder of Isotope28, a company devoted to software architecture and development practices and blogs here. Sandeep Mitra is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at SUNY Brockport and a Research Scientist at Isotope28. Dr. Mitra has over thirteen years of academic and industrial experience in large-scale software development, object-oriented development, and distributed computing.

Thought leader and rattler of CEO’s cages, Lee Thayer, has done it again. In his newest book, from WME Books, he advises in his overview, “For all those who would presume to manage a human enterprise, there are two ways of succeeding. One is to get lucky. The other is to avoid failing.” According to Thayer, “There are also two ways of failing: One is to follow one’s peers, lemming-like down the slippery slope of mediocrity. The other is to be oblivious to what part of the problem you are.”

“Hardly anyone sets out to fail,” Thayer says. “But most managers and executives do fail. They fail their own hopes and aspirations, if not their roles.” This book, he goes on to note, offers insight into how to avoid failing – by turning the current flood of advice on how to succeed, upside-down.

Thayer’s inverted lessons will, in the end, show us that success is knowing how to be in the “learning mode,” to fulfill your “role,” and to go against pop psychology that says “tolerance is a virtue.“ As a follow-up to Thayer’s popular book, Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing, How Executives Fail gives readers pause – in its 25 Surefire Recipes for Sabotaging Your Career.

Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business from the University of Southern California, says, “Habit is a great deadener and this book will help you break the ones that could fatally end your career (and ambitions). The best ‘insurance’ book on leadership I’ve read.”

Greg Novak, of Harris Interactive, writes, “If you’re a leader who, like me, is determined to create a great organization, this book will help you to avoid … failing.”

How Executives Fail is a perverse look at how to succeed in business today. Thayer takes the view that the world is a perverse place to live and do business, and unless you are perverse in kind, you risk following friends and colleagues down the path of mediocrity, a surefire path to failure. Rather than do so by default, he recommends doing so with intent, with dash, with aplomb.

James O’Toole, author of Creating the Good Life, writes, “Absolutely brilliant! Since you can’t learn luck, Thayer offers his readers a baker’s two dozen ways to ‘fail on purpose’ in this original, funny, and useful lilttle gem of a book.”

If your goal in life is to succeed, you need to read this book. If you’re caught up in disappointment and failure, you need to read this book. If you want to rattle cages [your own, your boss’s, your managers’], contact Lee Thayer and have him give his unique coaching in person by writing to us and requesting information on Thayer’s availability. For more fun and real interactive cage rattling, visit Thayer’s blog A Leader's Journey. Lee will be happy to engage you in conversation sure to expose life’s perversities in ways you never dreamed of.

Anyone who deals with labor relation’s issues is well aware of how employment laws can be confusing. Trying to find a current publication that offers easy-to-understand information, collected in a user-friendly way, is all but impossible – just try searching “federal employment laws” on Google!

The book is appropriately aimed at employers, business managers, HR professionals – just about anyone who has employees – as well as students majoring in human resource and labor relations. The authors say, “We did not write this book to replace having a lawyer, but rather to provide information to help professionals better interact with outside counsel and build positive work environments.”

Each of the 18 chapters focuses on particular aspects of federal labor and employment law. The authors’ expertise in labor law covers all the bases, including explanations of what the laws are coupled with relevant background information as to why and how the laws were created. They interpret what each statute means, and offer guidance as to what organizations can do to ensure compliance and how to develop effective and positive employee-related programs.

The book has numerous Q & A sections and special callouts that address issues HR managers face every day. For example, there are over 40 frequently asked questions (with answers) regarding the Family Medical Leave Act. Helpful checklists, such as those on hiring, evaluating performance and termination, offer a road map as to how to proceed. Not only can you read about what you should do, but identify “personnel practices to avoid” as well.

DiLorenzo’s and London’s combined 67 years of legal practice working with employers is evident throughout the book. DiLorenzo heads up a 53-person employment law division and London has served as legal counsel for a number of prominent professional business associations in the country.

What Every Business Manager and HR Professional Should Know About Federal Labor and Employment Laws is applicable to both large and small organizations. Large corporations will find it a great resource for training HR and management staffs, while the smaller companies (who have an HR manager wearing many hats) will find it to be reference that lets them “get their arms around” a very difficult subject.

Author Mary Clare Hunt is a marketer, as well as part of the “target market” today’s companies are trying to reach. In her life as a partner in Interpret-her she works with companies to help them understand how all departments in business affect the female consumer, not just the marketing department.

As a consumer, she’s purchased 11 cars, furnished 7 homes, and bought groceries for over 24,000 meals. During that time she’s listened to kudos and complaints from women at all levels. When she says the women’s consumer culture is shifting – she’s speaking from professional experience and from inside the female community.

Hunt’s influential new book, In Women We Trust, and its accompanying blog, reveal the secrets of the “women’s consumer culture” in an effort to give everyone an equal opportunity to meet the needs of this powerful group of spenders.

Ms. Hunt says, “One day, I realized that all of my professional dealings were with – women. I hadn’t consciously chosen to work only with women, it happened over time. They were providing more value than men…and I liked working with them. In a way I had switched from brand XY to brand XX,” she kidded. A quick survey of her friends revealed that they felt the same way – they, too, were electing to work with women, choosing to do business within their own “culture” primarily because of the service.

Smart business professionals know that in today’s marketplace women are controlling more and more purchasing decisions. Hunt’s book delves well beyond the usual marketing tools of fancy advertisements and catchy slogans. “Women are interested in building connections and relationships with those whose values and communication skills match their own. It speeds up the trust building and makes business more fun,” says Ms. Hunt, “The challenge for companies is identifying the characteristics of ‘trust’ from a women’s perspective and then incorporating them throughout a company. Fortunately, the feminine culture is just that, a culture – learning to work within it is just part of a learning curve. In today’s world, that’s business as usual.”

In Women We Trust: A cultural shift to the softer side of business is for marketers and business professionals who may be aware of this cultural shift but aren’t quite sure how to instill change. And, it’s for their employees who, in most instances, are in a position to influence customers to a greater extent than expensive advertising and marketing promotions. It’s also for female consumers who take their purchasing power seriously.

In a world of social computing and word-of-mouth sales, In Women We Trust identifies an important new purchasing trend guaranteed to change the way you do businesses today.

Historical letters and papers paint a picture of “new rules, new maxims of trade” on the iron rails of 19th century America.

WME Books is proud to announce the release of Thunderbolt from a Clear Sky, by Robert C. Stevens. The book chronicles Robert W. S. Stevens days as a land speculator, a lawyer, and a railroad builder. Of special interest to history buffs is Robert W.S. Stevens' first person account of the infamous Quantrill rebel raid on Lawrence, Kansas, in 1863, a part of American history often left out of the history books.

Written with the help of editor Betty Adams, Stevens chronicles the life of his great-grandfather in the tumultuous frontier world of early America. The story is brought to life in vivid prose - accompanied by original black and white photographs. The author and his editor paid careful attention to the study of a man who was a pivotal figure in the industrialization and modernization of 19th century America. Their efforts have created a biographical account of an exceptional man whose works deserve to be remembered throughout history.

"I didn't write it to idolize my great-grandfather," Stevens' says. "My admiration and respect are obvious. But, I really wanted to share an important part of American history - especially a good deal of the early history of Missouri and Kansas, according to my great-grandfather's writings." Stevens' created much of the book from the diaries and letters he discovered in an attic, years ago.

This description of Robert W.S. Stevens, (as noted in the book) by his contemporaries, tells a story all in itself:

New life, new energy, new enterprises, new rules and maxims of trade, come with the advent of railroads. Bob Stevens has set things a-bobbing. His railroad has fallen upon us like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. He is everywhere all at once, omnipresent, ubiquitous, and irrepressible. He launches his iron rails as Jove did his thunderbolts. The rapidity with which he has built the railroad between here and Humboldt has no parallel in the history of railroad construction. Chetopa, KS, Advance, June 1870.

Robert C. Stevens has written a fascinating biography and inspiring story of an American businessman, legislator (Kansas State and U.S. Congressman from N.Y.), and farmer. Woven through the biographical account of Robert W. S. Stevens' life are numerous colorful stories of the American west, the railroad industry, and a great (though previously unheralded) American family.

Thunderbolt from a Clear Sky is offered at WME Books' bookstore. History buffs, biography buffs, and all readers who value a good story, will find this book a fascinating read.

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